ABSTRACT
The mass closing of public schools and sell-off of public school properties, busting teacher unions, and mass firings of teachers has been a cornerstone of the new “regimes of expulsions” in U.S. cities. This paper analyzes the introduction of this agenda, and conflict it has generated, and later acquiescence, in Newark, New Jersey a “majority-minority” city ruled by a “black urban regime” form of municipal government. Beginning under the mayoralty of Cory Booker, a contentious movement opposing the neoliberal makeover of the city’s public schools emerged and grew. His successor, Ras Baraka, who rose to power trumpeting and receiving the backing of this movement, has overseen the winding down of protests while continuing, for the most part, the same neoliberal agenda for public schools as his predecessor. The answer to this paradox lies in Baraka’s effective wielding of a “racial democracy” ideology and political practice that has allowed him to appear progressive to his popular base, and yet still adhere to a public school regime of expulsion agenda required by his corporate governing partners. The power of Racial Democracy is rooted in its class vacuousness that has allowed Baraka to simultaneously confront a “racist” state power structure denying “self-determination” to a “Black and Brown” community, while continuing the political-economy of state-driven, rentintensifying real estate development that drives public school privatization and dispossess much of the “community” he claims to defend.